Old, beer drinking gamer. I think my first game was the ASCII version of Star Trek on an IBM mainframe at my Dad's work. Second was probably Pong that he built out of parts from an 'Electronics Today' magazine on a black and white TV....

Well I did play the System Shock 2 demo (and was scared at the guy hanging from the wall), but even with the graphics upgrade I'm a graphics whore. I just don't think I'd get the same experience from it if I had say.. played it when it was released, and would rush through it, which wouldn't be fair to Looking Glass.

Granted, you're a pansy ass, but just go finish the game. At least you'll know what some of us are comparing standards to and you'll get so absorbed you won't notice the dated graphics.

No kidding. I think I just installed Nexus: The Jupiter incident for the third time and Gothic 3 for about the fourth or fifth time (due to patching issues).

I know I've installed Quake Wars three times already, and have installed Wolf: ET about a gazillion times. (Yes, I know they're online games). But I'm sure either 3 or 10 is a nice round number for people who don't mind licensing their software.

I actually find the after 9PM CST time to 2AM CST the best time to game on any platform.

I agree completely, from an FPS standpoint anyways, not sure about modern MPOGS as I haven't played them since the ASCII days.

During primetime, the kids are still up, but from 10pm to about 4am you get the drunks and druggies and just normal people that want to have fun and have a good time. At some point you start seeing the Europeans waking up but they seem more mature. Then the North American kids wake up before school and flood the servers with stupidity.

I usually pass out around then, but if you're up after school around 3pm through primetime it get's really bad, then the closer you get to midnight the more reasonable it gets.

It's all about timing. Avoid the masses.

P.S. Can we keep this as primarily as a PC Game site? Leave the PS3 vs 360 bashing for Morning Consolization where the rest of us don't have to read it.

As we've seen in MMOG's and even shit like Oblivion, the punters are willing to pay money to avoid actually playing the game (ie earning stuff from using their own skill and time) or just for silly fluff.

There's an idiot born every minute and video gamers obviously include enough retards out there for businesses to provide them with their needs.

My keyboards are covered in beer, tobacco, food and who knows what else. I give them a wipe every few months or just replace them. I don't care, I seem to have an immune system and don't have problems dealing with billions of mini lifeforms that share the planet with me.

Not really. 7 gigs is a 3-4 hour download. You could do that without ever leaving your chair.

No, actually you're wrong. I'm on Rogers Portable right now which has spotty connection problems and maxes out at 59KB/s. So 7GB is NOT a 3-4 hour download. Apparently they have caps as well but I don't care as I'm getting (after a three week wait) normal internet again next week. (6Mb DSL with a 200GB monthly cap if you care to know).

I'll buy the Orange Box for thirty bucks when it happens. For Bioshock, maybe I'll just buy it but install the pirate version so I don't have to gunk up my new system with fucked up drivers. As I said before, I'm in no rush, I have plenty to play in the meantime.

It really is just a rip-off of Return To Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory but with the game balance and teamplay removed.

That's what it sounds like to me but I haven't played it yet. Yes I played back in the Q3 days or whenever it was. Now I play ETPro all the time, shitty graphics and all, the gameplay rocks. Also it sounds like most servers run Friendly Fire Off, which to me is a big no-no as people spam more and aren't as careful and precise as they should be.

I can't say that I'm really stoked about it but hopefully the other two games in the orange box are worth it.

Thanks Warskull for the review, sounds like what I expected. I plan to buy the Orange Box when I see it in stock for a reasonable price. I'm looking forward to Ep2 more than anything but portal could be interesting. Yes I could pirate it, but why bother? It's so much easier installing from a couple of DVD's. 7GB download for a trial or torrent? I don't think so.

Actually it is Valve's fault because there is no legitimate reason why Valve could not offer this free trial to anyone at any time.

Good point. I have a free weekend to myself and it would have been nice to check out the latest and greatest, but because I missed the 'preload window announcement' I'm SOL.

But whose loss is it? Not mine. I have my regular games that I'm still quite happy with.

Valve's? Maybe they would have got an impulse sale. Once I saw the 7GB download requirement after installing Steam, I uninstalled Steam. Simple.

Now that I think about it, since all the flash and hoopla has worn off of everyone here, maybe it's not a game I care about, nor Portal. I still want to play Ep2 though, but it was $30. I know I'm not paying thirty bucks for a few hours of gameplay. If I wanted to get ripped off like that I'd have bought COD4.

To me it's not much of an issue, if the Orange Box was in the store yesterday instead of the smaller components broken up into overpriced products, I might have bought it.

If I'd known about the preload a couple of days ago, I would have downloaded it and played it this weekend. And who knows? Maybe bought it online if I actually liked it.

I've done neither and it doesn't bother me, I have enough entertainment to keep me happy for quite awhile.

I didn't lose any money and Valve didn't get any. They didn't get a sale from me. No big deal. I doubt any of us will lose any sleep over it as I'm having a good weekend and I bet they are too.

I was in an ebgames looking for something fun to play but nothing really caught my attention until I was walking out and noticed Portal, Ep2 and TF2 all being sold seperately. I'd forgot about wanting to buy the Orange Box but they didn't have any.

Then tonight I realized that I'd missed the post on April 30th about preloading for the free weekend. The same demo and/or free weekend that I've bitched about here before but now I've missed it.

Well, I actually installed steam, but it's a 7GB download for the 2-day demo. On my slow internet connection, I might, just *might* get the 7GB down by 1pm EST Sunday. Anyways, I gave up on the idea.

Not Valves fault really, just wish I'd paid attention a couple of days earlier and started the preload. I'll get the Orange Box eventually, I'm sure.

At least it's inspired me to play some ETPro which I haven't done for a few weeks, and from the sounds of it TF2 is just a class based CTF type of game. But don't quote me on that as I haven't played it yet.

As for unlocks and achievments, I didn't know that TF2 had that whole thing going, I never liked it in BF2. I prefer Enemy Territory's way, where everything is reset after a match in Stopwatch, or you hit your max in a campaign (2-3 hours, sometimes a few days depending on the server), then everything is reset. But again, I'll comment on that once I've gotten the chance to play TF2.